Alicia Pakareu commented on a previous post about Veracel, to inform us about another threat caused by eucalyptus monocultures and extensive cattle grazing. Above is her video, and below is her information posted on vimeo.com.

For the past three months, landless farmers from Brazil’s Movement of Landless Peasants (MST) have occupied an area of land used by the company Veracel. The land is classified as devolutas land, which is land that has no official land title and therefore belongs to the state. The state is supposed to allocate these lands to small-scale farmers, never to private companies. Despite the protests, despite the devolutas land issue and despite the ongoing problems that Veracel has created for local communities, Veracel remains certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

This press release and photos come from the Alert against the Green Desert Network in Bahia.

This month’s World Rainforest Movement Bulletin is focussed on women’s voices on plantations. The following article looks at the impacts of plantations on women in Brazil, and how women are leading the struggle against plantations.(more…)

In November 2008, Stora Enso announced that it plans to build a pulp mill at Paso de los Toros in Tacuarembo, Uruguay. Technical studies are still to be carried out.

Stora Enso has been buying up land in Uruguay for several years, but does not yet have a large enough area of plantations to supply the proposed pulp mill. The company’s plantations in Uruguay currently cover 12,000 hectares.

In August 2008, Via Campesina Brazil and the Movement of Landless Peasants (MST) launched an international campaign against the activities of the Swedish-Finnish pulp and paper company Stora Enso. Via Campesina Brazil is asking people to write to the governments of Sweden and Finland and to the head office of Stora Enso, to protest against the company’s operations in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. The letter is below. Representatives of Via Campesina and MST will visit the Finnish and Swedish embassies in Brazil this week, to deliver the letter.

On 11 August 2008, Via Campesina Brazil and the Movement of Landless Peasants (MST) launched an international campaign against the activities of the Swedish-Finnish pulp and paper company Stora Enso. Via Campesina Brazil is asking people to write to the governments of Sweden and Finland and to the head office of Stora Enso, to protest against the company’s operations in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. The letter is below. Representatives of Via Campesina and MST will visit the Finnish and Swedish embassies in Brazil this week, to deliver the letter.(more…)

A Brazilian Federal Court ruled in June 2008 that Veracel must uproot 96,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantations and replant the land with native trees. Veracel was also fined US$12.5 million for deforesting areas of the Atlantic Forest with bulldozers and tractors during its first years of operation.(more…)

Stora Enso is starting work on a feasibility study into building a €1 billion pulp and paper mill in the Nizhny Novgorod region in Russia. The study is due to be completed in April 2009, reports Thomson Financial News. The study will look at the whether it is profitable to produce paper for a Russian market using wood from Russia.(more…)

On Tuesday, 4th March 2008, about 900 women from the International Peasant Movement Via Campesina were violently evicted by the Military Police from an area of 2,100 hectares of Stora Enso’s plantations at the Tarumã Farm in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. According to a statement from Via Campesina about 60 women were badly injured and 800 were arrested. The Military Police used rubber bullets during the eviction. 250 children at the camp were separated from their parents. Tents were destroyed and tools taken from the women.

This Tuesday, 4 March, around 900 women of the Via Campesina occupied the Tarumã Farm, 2,100 hectares big, in the municipality of Rosário do Sul, at about 400 km from the state capital Porto Alegre. They arrived at the area at about 6 am and started immediately to cut down eucalyptus trees and to plant native trees seedlings. In a press release, the women declare that:

“Our action is legitimate. It is Stora Enso that is acting illegally. Planting this green desert in the border region is a crime against the legislation of our country, against the ‘pampa’ (type of grassland) biome and against the food sovereignty of our state that stays with every time less land to produce food crops. We are cutting what is bad and planting what is good for the environment and for the people of Rio Grande do Sul”.